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Im not saying that this is not true(seriously no snark here at all) but its weird how things like this come together on the internet some times. Even on Hacker

by S_A_P 6y ago

Im not saying that this is not true(seriously no snark here at all) but its weird how things like this come together on the internet some times. Even on Hacker news, it seems that there have been times that topics bubble up from multiple sources. In the abstract it can seem rigged.

ryukafalz 6y ago
When someone sees a post that relates to something else they know about, they're likely to post that too. No rigging required, just people being social as people do. :)
yreg 6y ago
Isn't this Baader-Meinhof phenomenon[0]? You learn about (or give a good think to) something and then you start noticing it everywhere. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion
- Normal_gaussian 6y ago
  I don't think so In the general case, maybe a little bit, but mostly not. In the specific case, not. Baader-Meinhof is about an illusion of high frequency. This specific case (iran + github) is direct coincidence. The general case of the poster above (topics bubble up from multiple sources) is not, because topics can be demonstrated to follow patterns of relatedness (there is a term that I forget) and :. the frequency is not illusionary. Of course, that supposes the pattern noticed is the pattern that was genuinely in the articles. Baader-Meinhof will apply to anything the user misidentifies. I presume that the direct links between groups of articles (ie, the ones that caused them to be written or posted) are much more prominent than the "background" noise of links that the user will Baader-Meinhof.
mattm 6y ago
We've seen something similar at work where 2 or 3 people will come across an obscure bug in our code all in the same week. When looking into the root cause it turned out that the bug was created 18 months ago. So for 18 months it went unnoticed and then multiple people come across it pretty much at the same time. This has happened a few times and the people who found the bug were working on different things so it's not like they find it because they're working in the same area.
- epilys 6y ago
  There's so many things going on all the time, that there not being any coincidence of any kind is less probable than these kinds of coincidences examined individually. The world's a great and bizarre place.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
  I recently corrected a misspelling of Nicolas Cages' birth name in the German wikipedia that had been there for 15 years. I could not find a single German-language source for correct spelling, because they all copied the error from either Wikipedia or each other. Then, I discovered the issue being mentioned on the discussion page two weeks earlier and never before.
  - ineedasername 6y ago
    That's an excellent example of XKCD's citogenesis: https://xkcd.com/978/ https://xkcd.com/978/
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dang 6y ago
(We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25648849 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25648849.)

by S_A_P 6y ago

ryukafalz 6y ago

When someone sees a post that relates to something else they know about, they're likely to post that too. No rigging required, just people being social as people do. :)

yreg 6y ago

Isn't this Baader-Meinhof phenomenon[0]? You learn about (or give a good think to) something and then you start noticing it everywhere. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion

Normal_gaussian 6y ago
I don't think so In the general case, maybe a little bit, but mostly not. In the specific case, not. Baader-Meinhof is about an illusion of high frequency. This specific case (iran + github) is direct coincidence. The general case of the poster above (topics bubble up from multiple sources) is not, because topics can be demonstrated to follow patterns of relatedness (there is a term that I forget) and :. the frequency is not illusionary. Of course, that supposes the pattern noticed is the pattern that was genuinely in the articles. Baader-Meinhof will apply to anything the user misidentifies. I presume that the direct links between groups of articles (ie, the ones that caused them to be written or posted) are much more prominent than the "background" noise of links that the user will Baader-Meinhof.

mattm 6y ago

We've seen something similar at work where 2 or 3 people will come across an obscure bug in our code all in the same week. When looking into the root cause it turned out that the bug was created 18 months ago. So for 18 months it went unnoticed and then multiple people come across it pretty much at the same time. This has happened a few times and the people who found the bug were working on different things so it's not like they find it because they're working in the same area.

epilys 6y ago
There's so many things going on all the time, that there not being any coincidence of any kind is less probable than these kinds of coincidences examined individually. The world's a great and bizarre place.
IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
I recently corrected a misspelling of Nicolas Cages' birth name in the German wikipedia that had been there for 15 years. I could not find a single German-language source for correct spelling, because they all copied the error from either Wikipedia or each other. Then, I discovered the issue being mentioned on the discussion page two weeks earlier and never before.
- ineedasername 6y ago
  That's an excellent example of XKCD's citogenesis: https://xkcd.com/978/ https://xkcd.com/978/

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

dang 6y ago

(We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25648849 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25648849.)